Midnight Raid

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  “That’s nice, that is: break a leg before you start.” More tooth-sucking accompanied this.

  Fysshe-Smith, who had worked for a Mayfair bookmaker before the war, was never slow to see an opportunity. “I think I’ll run a book on how many casualties there are during boat training.”

  Sergeant Major Duff frowned. “One more crack like that, Fishy, and I’ll put you on Orderly Corporal for a month. That kind of joke is very bad for morale.”

  Fysshe-Smith looked unrepentant but held his peace.

  *

  Three craft were needed to embark the Headquarters Troop of four officers and 89 other ranks, which included the Signals Platoon’s officer and 20 men. Each of the five Rifle Troops, comprising three officers and 66 O.Rs, needed two craft. The Heavy Weapons Troop, with two and 37 respectively, needed one.

  Each landing craft, assault had a crew of four naval ratings from the ship’s company of the 8000 ton landing ship, infantry, H.M.S. Prince Of Denmark; which had once plyed between Newcastle and Esbjerg and would carry 100 Commando to and from Norway. For the sailors, this was also their first combined operation.

  Beauchamp-Ballantrae and his second-in-command, watching the Rifle Troops going aboard, being taken a mile offshore and brought back for a practice assault landing, saw soldiers stumbling, falling, and either being soaked in the shallow water at the beach’s edge or bruising themselves against the boats’ deck and sides.

  “It won’t be so bad when we launch from davits, Colonel.”

  “No, Hugh: and coming ashore will be easier, because the sea is calmer in the fjord. If the chaps can become proficient in these conditions, they’ll be damn good in the real thing. But I’m not going to tell them this is rougher than the reality. A pleasant surprise will do wonders for morale at the crucial moment.”

  “Yes, Colonel. I’ve been thinking about A Troop. Do you think there’s something in a spot of sleight of hand, as it were? I mean, after the section that is going to create a diversion has drawn Jerry over to the south side of the town, if they make as if they’re pulling out, Jerry should, logically, do the same. If the section then went up the south cliff, and fought their way towards the electricity station, they would take the Hun unawares.”

  “Good. A pincer movement. Let’s take a look at the possibilities. It’s actually a slightly easier climb than the north cliff. The H.W. Troop could cover them, too.”

  “I think B Troop are going to need all the help they can get, Colonel. What that north cliff really needs is a parachute operation, if that were possible.”

  “The day will come when all Commandos will be trained parachutists, Hugh. It’s the phase following their ascent of the north cliff that keeps me awake at night. If Jerry reacts quickly, and if he can bring his Flak down to bear on the ground that B Troop will have to cross, it’s going to be unpleasant.”

  The military term “killing ground” occurred to both men. At the battle of Agincourt this had been 200 yards deep; at Waterloo, half a mile; in the great battles on the Western Front, in the Great War, five miles. It was an ugly term, but necessary and realistic. Neither of them wished to see a killing ground for B Troop created on the comparatively open stretch that lay between the top of the cliff and the power station: but that was the line of approach that the necessity for a swift and certain, and essential, success dictated.

  Chapter Five

  Major Redlich, like Lieutenant Colonel Beauchamp-Ballantrae, was a pragmatist. He had deployed the defence force at Olafsund in accordance with sound principles, but was not inhibited by hidebound rules and theories. The exercise, which had been on a larger scale than any previous ones, had caused him some anxiety and prompted changes.

  He was grateful to Zimmer for his bold and impertinent flanking diversionary attack and the main attack by an imaginative stratagem. It would not be possible to conceal conventional mines at either place where the attackers had gone ashore, but both had to be protected. He decided to place explosive charges among the rocks, in holes drilled well above the level at which waves could enter them. He would also mount guards there: half a platoon of infantry with two machine-guns at each point. That should be enough to repulse or hold attacks while reinforcements were being sent from the centre of the town.

  He would not need to strengthen the harbour defences, if he placed those two platoons properly: the enemy would not be able to force their way into the port, because the outer defence posts would give ample warning. The first exchange of shots would be enough for that.

  The power station worried him. The Germans would attack a target like that with paratroops. A force of only 78 men, dropped by night onto Fort Eben Emael on the Belgian frontier, had devastated and captured it, thus blasting open a gap through which the invaders poured. The British, however, were late starters after Russia and Germany in forming a parachute brigade, and had no parachute troops to spare for such a minor objective. None the less, he must not be over-confident. On the next large-scale exercise, he would, himself, try to devise some plausible line of attack that might take the defenders up there unawares; or young Zimmer might bend his supple brain to the matter. So, he had better sow a small minefield up on that ledge or shelf, that narrow plateau, that traversed the flank of the mountain. The best place would be on the east side of the shallow depression in which an enemy force could go to ground; if one could conceive of any means by which they might actually get up there in the first place.

  All these interesting refinements, however, could wait until the morrow. This evening, he had less exacting and gentler matters on his mind. He had been into the mountains a few days previously with his sporting rifle and shot a deer. He had given it to the officers’ mess, save one haunch which had been a present for the lovely Kirsten. The meat had been hung long enough to be eaten that evening. He left his quarters for his mistress’s house with his usual good humour heightened by the success of the defence exercise and the prospect of an evening devoted to physical pleasure: good food and drink, and the passionate embraces of a skilful lover.

  Kirsten’s house stood halfway up the slope between the waterfront and the ledge. It was a traditional wooden building, painted in the same shade of red, a weathered dark maroon, with white window frames and doors, as most of the others on the hillside. A lawn and some flowerbeds, which enjoyed a brief season that was already over, surrounded it, enclosed by a white wooden fence. Homes like this seemed to Redlich to express the admirable character of the people. They were honest, plain, conservative, hardy and simple; pleasing to the eye and proud of what they were. The Norwegians were rugged, handsome and intensely patriotic. Redlich admired them. Their small Army, brutally outnumbered by the Wehrmacht, had fought well. Many of its members and many from the Navy and Air Force had escaped to Britain when Norway fell, to continue fighting. He respected their spirit and courage.

  This was a people who had the same fervent loyalty to their country as the Germans. He recalled, with an inward smile, the story told by the Norwegians against themselves, about a fictitious international competition for the best book about elephants. The British entry was entitled “Elephants I Have Met; And shot”; the French, “La Vie Amoureuse de l’Eléphant”; the German, a ponderous and detailed account of the animal’s origins, habits and population statistics, “Der Elefant”; the American, “The Dollar Value Of The World’s Biggest Land Mammal”. The Norwegian work was quite simply devoted to the only subject of real interest to that nation: it was called “Norway And The Norwegians”!

  Redlich was astonished that such people had produced a traitor like Quisling and even more by the fact that Quisling had supporters. The number of collaborators, traitors, or, as they were already known, quislings, in Olafsund was very small; but that they existed at all was a surprise. A lucky one for him: Kirsten was as attractive and ardent as any woman with whom he had ever had an affair at home or in France, Italy or Sweden, all of which he had visited before the war. Even if it was resentment against the British for having
killed her husband, rather than enthusiasm for Germany, that had driven her into his arms, that did not lessen the gratification he found in her bed.

  The excitement aroused by the events of the day had put him into a euphoric state which was heightened, as he stopped his car at her gate, by anticipation of the homely comforts awaiting him and of her tall, slender skier’s body whose skin, tanned by the Scandinavians’ fondness for sunbathing, glowed golden in the firelight when they made love, as they often did, on a thick rug spread on the hearth.

  She carefully allowed no light to escape when she opened the door to him. They kissed in the hall before he took off his greatcoat, and went hand-in-hand into the drawing-room, where logs flamed fragrantly in the grate.

  “There seemed to be a lot of excitement this afternoon,” she said, smiling. “I thought those aeroplanes would take the roof off.”

  “That was only Zirkenbach being childish. You know how touchy he is about his dignity: he didn’t want to take part in an exercise today, but I insisted. He and his boys kept diving onto my Headquarters, making a confounded row, rattling all the windows and making it almost impossible to talk or use the telephone. But I haven’t complained; that would only have gratified him.”

  “I saw them. So, Dieter, are you satisfied that you can defend us if the British come?”

  She broke away from his encircling arm to pour schnapps.

  “Perfectly confident. I wish they would come; it would relieve the monotony.”

  She grinned in the mocking flirtatious way she had which never failed to harden him immediately, and drew close as she offered him his drink. As soon as her hand was free, and while she raised her own glass to her lips with the other hand, her long fingers went down to his groin and slid along the smooth cloth of his uniform teasingly. “I’m sorry you find me monotonous, Liebling.”

  “Not you Bezauberde – Gorgeous – you know that damned well. I meant militarily boring.”

  “Oh, you and your ambition! Skol.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  They raised their glasses to breast level, looked into each other’s eyes, sipped, lowered the glasses and gazed eye-to-eye again, then sat down side by side on the sofa.

  “Do you despise ambition, Schatzie?”

  “Of course not. But it is not a very Norwegian characteristic.”

  He smiled. “I am not a very Norwegian character.”

  “We are slow-going, peace-loving people.”

  The smile went from his face. “And we Germans are warmongers with a fanatical ambition to dominate Europe; if not the world: is that it?”

  “Indignation will spoil your digestion.” She linked her fingers in his, but he would not return her smile. “All I meant was that you, you personally, are so energetic, dynamic, that you hardly know how to relax: and that is not good for you, Dieter.”

  “You are my relaxation, Liebling.”

  “I am glad.” It was said simply and she was suddenly serious; it seemed to him.

  “If it were not for you, I would be utterly bereft of all consolation for my exile here.”

  “When you are a famous general, I shall be able to say `I was Herr General’s plaything… for a while’.” She spoke lightly.

  “Herr General’s very dear friend and necessary refuge from despair.”

  “Despair? You?” She turned to him in genuine surprise.

  “My contemporaries have the opportunities to surpass me. Many of my friends with the same rank and decorations are lucky enough to be fighting in North Africa and Russia, while I stagnate in a backwater. That does make me despair sometimes.”

  She looked inscrutable, her eyes turned away from him. “It won’t be long, then, before you apply to go to one of the active Fronts.”

  “It troubles my conscience as an officer that it is your charms that bind me here.”

  Her smile was wry. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “It’s true. I ought to do my best to get a transfer to a combat command.”

  She gave him a searching look. “If you really mean it, that is a great compliment. But is this really such a dead end for you? Why hold an exercise like we all saw today, if you truly believe that nothing is going to happen here?”

  “Because it is essential to maintain the morale of my officers and men.”

  “But surely it is bad for their morale to be kept constantly on the alert when they know in their hearts that it is all pointless?”

  “But it no longer is, Schatzie. We might find the enemy on our doorstep any day now; or, rather, any night.”

  She waited for him to enlarge on this, but he fell silent. Presently she rose to fetch the roast venison and the bottle of Übelriechend Nachtgeschirr that had been breathing for the past hour. Afterwards, they fornicated: not, with urgency, in front of the fire, but at their leisure in the deep wide bed in her central-heated bedroom; once, twice and thrice, fortified in the intervals by cognac from the other bottle he had also provided.

  When he left her, she lay awake, recalling his words at the beginning of the evening and his apparent certainty that the British would make a raid on Olafsund before long.

  *

  There were three assault landing craft at the commando’s disposal now, so that the whole of H.Q. Troop could embark, as it would on Operation Halberd. The passage between the mainland and offshore islands, which approximated to the shape of Olafsund Fjord, was always rough. Each time the run was made, by whichever troop, some people were seasick. In B Troop, Dempster and Sergeant Major Duff were often among these. Both felt humiliated: Dempster, because he was always sensitive to the general attitude that equated actors with physical softness; Duff, because he was conscious of the tradition that expected an N.C.O. of his rank to be iron hard in every respect. He was only a Territorial soldier, a grocer by trade, and two of the other troop S.Ms were regulars, as were some of the sergeants, corporals and ranks below. Regulars habitually affected to scorn part-time and wartime soldiers of every rank, and Duff was determined that neither their respect nor his authority must be weakened. But, leaning over the side, retching until his guts ached, he felt demeaned.

  The date set for the operation left two weeks more for preparation. Taggart was satisfied with his troop’s performance on any cliff that it was given to climb; but the seasickness worried him. Pre-battle tension was enough, on its own, to cause stomach cramps and nausea. Even seasoned soldiers could suffer from it. Added to the biliousness induced by turbulent water, he feared that it would increase the number of victims when D day came.

  He consulted the Medical Officer, who told him that there was as yet no reliable specific against the affliction. He spoke to officers in the naval mess at the nearby small coastal town, and learned of various individual and idiosyncratic remedies: most of which necessitated eating and drinking of a sort that was enough in itself to make most people sick: raw onions and beer, fatty bacon and cocoa, ship’s biscuits and brandy, were among them. Finally, Taggart simply told his officers and men to reject any thought of sickness that came into their minds; to think of something specific, whether it was Betty Grable, a football or cricket match, a holiday, their rose bushes or vegetable gardens at home, or the detailed climbing of a difficult cliff. If they took their minds off the fact that they were being pitched and tossed about in a small boat, he said, there would be no room for awareness of physical discomfort.

  “I’m second to none in my admiration for the Captain,” said Corporal Fysshe-Smith, “but his amateur psychology doesn’t convince me. Nothing, not even Betty Grable, could take my mind off throwing up.”

  “Garn, Fishy.” Udall gave him a derisive grin. “You think about the widder woman in France; that’ll keep yer happy. And think about that red-haired bird you’ve been sparkin’ down at the ’arbour when her old man’s out fishin’ of a night. Just you think of that dirty great Scotch fisherman comin’ ’ome early one night, ’cos of a storm, and cutting yer balls off with a gutting knife. That’ll keep yer mind off
puking, all right.”

  Fysshe-Smith shuddered, but with a certain dignity. “Don’t, Bert. Don’t put such ideas into my head: it’s enough to keep me awake at night, let alone keep seasickness at bay.”

  Dempster, who happened to overhear this exchange, during a ten-minute break, told himself that Udall was probably right: to concentrate on a fear greater than that of the misery of sickness could very well overcome the latter. For himself, he decided, just thinking about the landing, the cliff-climb and the attack would probably be enough to drive away the lesser bogey. It’ll probably paralyse me with fear, so that I won’t even be able to get out of the boat and wade ashore, he concluded; but I’ll try it.

  *

  The commanding officer addressed his officers. “Change of plan. Intelligence tell me that the defences at Olafsund have been tightened up. Jerry has positioned a platoon, with two heavy M.Gs, at the foot of both the cliffs we were going to climb. They’ve built rock and sandbag parapets on the rocks to make sangars, which they keep permanently manned. It appears they’re jittery since the Spitsbergen show. The R.A.F. have taken some photographs, which I have here.

  “It means, I’m afraid, that we’re going to have to make a radical change. Instead of B Troop going in via the north cliff near the town, they’ll have to climb the higher cliff further down the fjord, just past Island One; and then march across the side of the mountain to the shelf above the town. It’s going to take longer; and it means we must be absolutely certain of knocking out the garrison on Island One without giving the alarm.”

  The Colonel’s eyes settled on Taggart, who remained impassive while all manner of strong language was exploding in his thoughts.

  Chapter Six

  On a dark night, at a time when the visibility would be the same as when the real raid was made, a week later, many degrees further north and at a different moon phase, 100 Commando carried out a full-scale exercise. H.M.S. Prince Of Denmark took them aboard and sailed at 10 knots the 15 miles to the exercise area.